Daily Archives: March 13, 2010

And now, a public service message from The Princess Bride’s Count Rugen on behalf of Daylight Savings Time. . .

“As you know, the concept of the suction pump is centuries old. Really that’s all this is except that instead of sucking water, we’re sucking time. We’ve just sucked one hour of your life away. We might one day go as high as five, but we really don’t know what that would do to you. So, let’s just start with what we have. What did this do to you? Tell me. And remember, this is for posterity so be honest. How do you feel?”

. . .

*** UPDATED on March 14, 2012: ***

I am the proud creator of the The Princess Bride’s Count Rugen Daylight Savings Time meme!

I’ve been BLOWN AWAY by how interest in this meme has taken off. (And yes, I know it’s “Saving” time, but that just never sounded right to me.) I revised this original blog post from 2010 with my newly updated and newly captioned image of Count Rugen on March 10th, 2012. I decided to reshare it a few hours before the DST switch because I was afraid no one would notice it on a Sunday. (Guess I was wrong!) So, I posted it to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Then on Sunday, I posted it to Google+ too for good measure.

I watched with mild interest as my Tumbler post was reblogged or liked a modest 30 or so times. Then, slowly, my blog traffic started to pick up. It went from what was typically 3-4 hits a week to nearly 1,000 hits in three days! I dug into my tracking stats and noticed traffic was referred from places I hadn’t posted, like Pinterest and still others I’d never heard of before. Apparently, many of you really liked this and have shared it exponentially “in the wild”. I spent a little time searching other sites where I thought it might turn up. I’ve found it shared widely on much higher traffic sites and even one where it had already received HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF VIEWS!

All I can say is…WOW!

I have no way to track this image now, but I’d love to hear where else it’s turned up! Since you found your way here, please consider leaving me a note in the comments with where you are in the world and where you saw it. A thoughtful comment from a real person is so much more meaningful than a collection of cold analytics statistics.